Thursday’s Transpo Conference: A Call for Reform

While former Bogota Mayor Enrique Peñalosa and DOT Commissioner Iris Weinshall got most of the attention for their keynote speeches at last week's transportation policy conference, much of the day's real intellectual ferment took place in the five separate breakout sessions that convened before lunch. The groups were organized as follows:

The goal of each workshop, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer said, was to generate lists of specific short-term and long-term priorities. After lunch, the moderators returned to the stage to present each workshop's findings.

Interestingly, a few key issues bubbled up in all five groups, regardless of the specific topic:

The five groups all expressed a deep and strongly-felt desire for a better quality of life on Manhattan's sidewalks, streets and non-park public spaces.

All called for a greater ability for people on the neighborhood-level to test new ideas on their own streets and share urban design best practices with other civic groups.

Each group called for better collaboration within city government and said that there needs to be improvement in the way that city officials work together across agency lines.

That last point emerged as the day's elephant-in-the-room. Tollerson and Yaro put the question this way: Can city agencies each working "in their own separate silos" nurture the flexible, collaborative processes necessary to create the needed change in New York City's transportation and public space policy?There were some serious heavy-hitters in the Planning and Policy workshop including Buz Paaswell, Director of CUNY's Transportation Research Center, and the general feeling in that breakout group was, "No." It is time for the post-Word War II structure of agencies and authorities responsible for New York City's vast transportation and public space infrastructure to be re-thought and reformed.

After her session on Pedestrians and Sidewalks Sheffer reported, "Many said it was important that communities have more of a role in trying to determine furniture, signage, and width of sidewalks." She also said, "a real concern is that there is not enough coordination on pedestrian and street issues" between city agencies. During the session neighborhood leaders said City Hall downplayed aesthetic priorities that weren't part of big development projects or well-funded retail districts. Wellington Chan of the Chinatown Partnership summed up the mood when he explained how hard it is to procure resources for something like new street furniture:

"Anything that's not dull gray concrete is not acceptable to the Department of Transportation. They'll say, "You have to design in accordance with DOT standards or you're liable for the cost. So, to put up a nice planter, you need to be a business improvement district or a local development corporation."

Sheffer said that many of the participants in her workshop are ready to take it upon themselves to foster a new proactive culture. They want to design their own principles for managing street vendors, for instance, and to build coalitions among different civic groups. Sheffer's Pedestrians and Sidewalks group wanted to:

Seek "better access to the waterfront," with money and staff to promote innovative design and public amenities.

In general, Sheffer said, the group wants to help the city cater to pedestrians' shifting needs and "enable them to traverse the borough with some degree of pleasantness."

Bruce Schaller's session on Cars and Buses spent a lot of its time focused on parking. He reported that there was a "division in the group about whether adding parking spaces eases the parking problem or adds more cars." Like Sheffer's session, Schaller's yielded a call for smarter government. He said the city should "coordinate agencies" on teams to manage big new developments or zoning changes. If the city does that, he said, experts in transportation and health and planning could evaluate a project's total impact on neighborhoods.

Schaller's group called for strong measures to solve Manhattan's congestion problem:

"Selective congestion pricing" via a phasing-in of charges on drivers where traffic "is most acute."

This pricing should come with and, perhaps, help to fund more and more frequent bus service.

The city should "rationalize" its parking policy to balance the needs of all street users.

Paul Steely White of Transportation Alternatives, whose group discussed underutilized transportation modes, also called for balance. "There's just not room enough to walk and bike in Manhattan," he said. His workshop proposed these steps:

White's group also discussed parking, noting that 15 bikes can fit in the same street space used to store one motor vehicle. The group consensus was that bike parking clogged neighborhoods with big numbers of cyclists like the East Village and Williamsburg would do well to set aside some street space for bike parking, particularly around subway stops.

Those who discussed subway service produced the day's most tailored suggestions. Activist Gene Russianoff, who heads the Straphangers Campaign for the New York Public Interest Research Group, said he had urged his group to "focus on things that could happen or are on the drawing boards." He reported support for the MTA's plan to install electronic real-time information on the 1, 6 and L lines in the next year. Looking farther ahead, Russianoff's group also pushed for cross-agency policies to make the subway better serve the streets above it. These would include:

Completion of the 2nd Ave subway, ideally with a link to Brooklyn.

A "green component across the system," building on the success of the solar panels at the Coney Island-Stilwell Avenue station.

Expanding elevator access and other services to people who use wheelchairs.

Participants acknowledged the gap between what New Yorkers really want and what is currently politically popular. Russianoff rated outgoing Governor George Pataki's pet project, a link from Penn Station to Grand Central, "middle priority" and gave Mayor Bloomberg's plan to extend the 7 line to 11th Avenue and 34th Street "very low priority." Yet, "at the moment seems most likely to go ahead in the real world," Russianoff said.

How to narrow the gap between the real world and the ideal? That was the focus of Tollerson and Yaro's panel. Tollerson's group called for sensible (i.e., radical) changes to guide future laws and rules. They want to see the City:

Just to clarify about the Schaller group. Pretty much everyone in the room support some type of congestion pricing. That “selective congestion pricing” was suggested by a resident of Hell’s Kitchen talking about the area around the lincoln tunnel.

http://www.livablestreets.com/people/Naparstek/ Aaron

Someguy,

Your comment was accidentally obliterated on an earlier, unedited version of this post that went online before it should have. Here is what you wrote (not sure if it still applies):

In regards to this creative interpretation:

â€œneighborhood leaders said City Hall ignored aesthetic requests from any group that doesnâ€™t represent development or retail interestsâ€

- thatâ€™s not accurate. I was in that session. The problem is this: DOT is limited – objectively, not subjectively – in what they can install with city funds. There are set materials (boring ones) that can be done with city funds. Anything more exciting needs to be funded from outside. And *thatâ€™s* why organized groups such as BIDs are more likely to see such creative projects through. Itâ€™s not that the DOT â€œignoresâ€ requests from particular groups. Itâ€™s that DOT has a particular policy that applies to ALL DOT projects that are city-funded. I donâ€™t think you interpreted this particular comment from the Pedestrian breakout session (and Ethel Shefferâ€™s bulleted summary) accurately.

someguy

Looks fixed, thanks for the gesture =)

Nicolo Macchiavelli

Great now you have the choir on board for the sermon. Now maybe you should move onto a program that will attract the heathens, or await their conversion.

http://www.livablestreets.com/people/Glenn/ Glenn

NM – This was not the choir, this was anyone who is involved in transportation planning in the city. There was no alternative argument made for continuing our reliance on automobiles. Everyone was pretty aligned that we need to get cars out of Manhattan. It’s just a matter of how…

Fred

It is a shame that human-powered transport is still not considered serious transportation which was a concern expressed during the fifth group and was one of the bullet points mentioned by Tollerson under long term strategies — which is also regrettable as it should been posted as a short term strategy — and omitted in this report.

http://newdemmajority.org Scott Powell

In a city where 70% of the residents do not own cars, there must be a rebalancing of priorities in the use of public space and transportation. New Yorkers, for instance, deserve car-free grand plazas in Times Square, Midtown, Downtown, and the Grand Army plaza in Brooklyn.

There should also be changes to the building code that require employers and buildings to allow employees to bring their bikes inside. More clearly separated and delineated bike lanes would do great things for health, pollution, energy consumption, and traffic.

Alec Appelbaum

Legislation is moving through the City Council that would establish some of the bike permissions Scott seeks, and Vision 42 got some play yesterday by promoting a pedestrian Times Sq. Anyone can find and affect details by surveying our posts.